Genes,
the unit of heredity, play an important role in the process of evolution.In the process of natural selection,
the best, most fit genes are passed on to successive generations of organisms.They code for physical characteristics
such as height, weight, and speed.Richard Dawkins suggests that there is a unit of culture that can be
passed on in the same selection pattern as genes.Dawkins calls these cultural units memes.Similar to how the most fit genes drive
biological evolution, it is believed that the most fit memes drive cultural
evolution.

Daniel
Dennet (2001) compares the synthesis of memes and humans to the synthesis that
occurred between prokaryotes and bacteria nearly one billion years ago.The endosymbiotic team of prokaryote
and bacterium proved to be more fit in certain ways than prokaryotes alone and
as a result they prospered.These
teams known as eukaryotes became increasingly more complex than prokaryotes
leading to multicellularity and organisms.Similarly, culture has infected human and animal minds
leading to benefits over those organisms not influenced by culture such as
spreading of the use of tools, bird songs, and other behaviors that lead to
reproductive success.

II. Comparing Meme Acquisition To Evolutionary Processes

It
would be beneficial to see how well memes fit into the system of processes
familiar to biological evolution such as natural selection.From this, new perspectives on culture
can be obtained.Kevin Laland and
Gillian Brown (2002) point out three ways of detecting natural selection that
can apply to memes cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man, and
teddy bears to take on increasingly juvenile characteristics.Laland and Brown claim that the purpose
of this is for the businesses they represent to gain attention and appeal to a
wider range of people since most people find baby-like faces pleasing.They also point out that convergence in
society due to similar pressures may have led things such as money, writing,
and the use of weapons to arise independently in several different areas.

The
third way of looking at memes in terms of evolution involves observing a sudden
disturbance such as a population crash.After a major disturbance in a population, large changes in gene
frequencies suggest that selection forces are occurring and the population is
moving towards a new equilibrium.A cultural shift in the aftermath of a disturbance would be evidence for
cultural evolution.Laland and
Brown suggest studies that focus on these occurrences such as how tourism
rejuvenates after a foot-and-mouth outbreak or which products come back into
fashion after a period of recession.

Studies
in these three models of selection--character displacement, convergence, and
frequency changes after sudden disturbance could reveal parallels between genes
and memes.However, this might not
be enough evidence to convince those who reject memes as explaining the scientific
aspect of culture.

III. Meme/ Gene Interaction

Laland
and Brown also try to take into account the process behind the human mind and
the selection of memes.They call
to attention the various ways memeticists are comparing memes to viruses.They note that some memeticists focus
solely on the infectious aspect of the meme as a mind virus.Laland and Brown suggest an interaction
between memes and genes in that susceptibility of the mind to memes is a major
factor that depends on an individual s genetic make-up.

The
interaction between memes and genes can be further illustrated in a theory by
Larry Bull, Owen Holland, and Susan Blackmore (2000).They suggest that human brain size expanded rapidly over
time mainly for memetic reasons.Meme competition results in some memes becoming successful in terms of
being widely imitated and spread (such as new skills) whereas others fail.Those that can best copy successful
memes gain advantages--status, survival, and being selected as preferred mates.Therefore, genes that facilitate
imitation of memes would become favored.Bull et al. reason that having a larger brain would make meme imitation
easier, thus memetic drive would favor genes coding for larger brains.

IV. Transmission

Henry
Plotkin (2000), however, suggest that memes are not spread by mere imitation of
behavior.He claims that memes are
spread through schemas which arise from shared values and beliefs.Schemas are central to the workings of
a culture--unwritten scripts or expectations that an individual learns about
their role in society.

Robert
Boyd and Peter Richerson state that unlike genes, ideas are not passed intact
from person to person.Breakdown
in the transmission of ideas can occur because of the differences in people s
backgrounds, in genes, and in cultures.These differences can cause one person to make incorrect assumptions as
to the motivation of another s behavior.Information in one person s brain generates behavior, and the other
person would have to infer the information required to do the same action since
they do not have a direct connection to the original information.

Therefore,
Boyd and Richerson claim that the passing on of memes is not a product of
natural selection since most memes are transformed during transmission.This transformation would cause a
person of one generation to acquire a completely different meme than the meme
belonging to a person of the previous generation from where it originated.

It
can be argued that genes are not always passed intact either.The processes of mutation and genetic
drift cause random shifts in the frequencies of alleles so that they are
slightly different from their gene predecessor.As a counter-argument, Boyd and Richerson state that genetic
mutations are rare, occur once per million replications, and their effect can
usually be ignored.They believe
that if mutations were more common, perhaps one in ten, then they would have a
major effect on which genes were most prevalent.Ideas spread and change rapidly from one person to the next,
therefore transformation effects and natural selection both must be considered
in understanding cultural change.

V. Problems and Potential

Joseph
Poulshock (2001) of Tokyo Christian University points out that there are three
problem areas (and one area of potential) in memetics--the study of memes.He claims that there are aspects of
memetics that are (1.) ill-defined, (2.) misguided and misinformed, and (3.)
unhelpful and unscientific.However, he identifies memetics as potentially helpful in the
understanding of language, mind and culture.

Poulshock
says there is a definitional problem with memes in that there is confusion over
whether memes are an actuality or an allegory.The Journal of Memetics defines memes as theanalog to the biological unit of
inheritance, the gene or the genetic replicator.Yet Poulshock claims that some memeticists refer to
thememe analogywhile others refer to them as actual
replicators.

Next,
regarding the misinformed aspect of memetics, Poulshock makes the following
statement:Memetics is a Darwinian
dysteleogical theory of culture and mind that is often forced to use
teleological language to describe what it claims to be non-teleological
processes and events.He says thatteleologicalization(looking toward a doctrine of final causes)
of natural events is not inherently wrong or misleading in certain
contexts.However, he claims it is
a fallacy when memeticists make the claim that culture and mind are fully
non-teleological entities.

Finally,
Poulshock critiques Bull, Holland, and Blackmore s proposal concerning memes
driving the evolution of the human brain.Poulshock finds such a claim to be unscientific.He wants memeticists to clearly admit
that there are claims that exist without empirical support, and he says that
statements about how memetics explain mind and culture should be reserved until
after empirical confirmation and not before.

By
acquiring empirical data about memes through experimentation and utilizing the
data with prior knowledge of evolutionary processes, a greater understanding of
how culture evolves can be realized.